


More From Hamburg

by Winstonian1



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Beatles Fanfiction, Gen, Hamburg, Sixties, george harrison fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 09:11:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 15,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17659895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winstonian1/pseuds/Winstonian1
Summary: I posted a story called Love From Hamburg, which was episodes from George's and the other Beatles' first trip to Hamburg. some people suggested that it could be extended, so I have. Some of this story was in the previous one but most is new and, I hope, shows how George grew and changed out in the fleshpots of Hamburg! I hope you enjoy it.</





	1. Chapter 1

LIVERPOOL 

Louise placed a mug of tea on the table in front of her youngest son and sat herself down opposite him, elbows on the table and her own cup cradled in both hands. George one-handedly tugged a cigarette out of the pack which was on the table next to him, lit it and then took a sip of his tea. They looked at each other silently for a while.

“Hamburg,” said Louise.

George nodded. “Yeah,” he said. Another drag of his cigarette. Louse said nothing, and George found he had to ask her. “What do you think?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she replied, although George felt sure she did know. She always knew. “What do you think?” She always did that too. Turned it back to him. Sometimes he wished she wouldn’t. This was one of those times.

“I think it’ll be good,” he declared. “Good work. Good pay. I’ll be getting good money.”

She continued to regard her son over the rim of her tea mug but made no further answer. George dropped his gaze, and then looked back up at his mum and found he had to drop the bravado act. “What do you think?” he asked again, and this time his tone was truly asking her to say.

“It’s a long way,” she said.

“Not that long.”

“You don’t speak any German.”

“I can learn.”

“Yeah, like you were always good at learning languages at school.”

“I did some!” he objected, and she smiled at him, not unkindly.

“I’ve heard things about Hamburg. It’s a rough place.”

“So’s Liverpool.”

“More than Liverpool. It’s a long way to be away on your own in a rough place.”

“So you think I shouldn’t go.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So, what do you think?” Again.

Louise Harrison reached across the old scratched kitchen table and placed her hand over his. He stared at it. The gesture didn’t disturb him; theirs was a tactile family and his mum’s squeeze of his hand wasn’t unusual. But it wasn’t giving anything away either. George looked back up at her. “I’d worry about you,” she said.

“Why?”

“You’re… very young.”

“I’m…”

“Geo, why do you keep asking what I think and argue with everything I say?” He just stared back at her, trying to think… “Do you want me to tell you not to go?”

“No! I…”

“Do you want to go?”

Did he want to go? More than anything. If the others were going. If they were going, he had to, he had to stay in the band. He couldn’t be left behind. He couldn’t.

“Mum.”

“Yes?”

He paused, and then went on, haltingly. He took a breath. “D’ya think I’d be ok, eh?” Quietly.

Louise looked across at the boy she still thought of as her little lad, her baby. Still his big, dark, and, she thought, rather beautiful eyes. Still his ears that stuck right out, still his thick hair now darkened to deep brown from the baby blond that seemed like yesterday. But now, a thinner and almost sculptured face, and a seriousness of expression that hinted at depths he seldom showed anyone, except her. The eyes searched hers. “I mean…” He didn’t really have anything else to say. He just wanted to pull back from the moment.

“Course you would!” She smiled. “You’re not daft. You can look after yourself.” She paused for another sip of her tea. “And you’re not going to be on your own. You’ll all stick together, won’t you.” George nodded emphatically. “I’m not sure about you going off there on your own, but you won’t be.”

“Nah. We’ll all be together. Paul’s a good mate. And John…”

They both laughed at the mention of John. John could take on Hamburg single-handedly.

But he wouldn’t have to. They’d all be together.

George took the last drag from the ciggie and stubbed it out in the full ashtray. He looked up at his mother and grinned. “Thanks mum.”

“I’ll make you some scones to share.”

“Mum!! I don’t need…”

“Shurrup. I’m making ‘em.” She pushed herself to her feet, and busily collected the two mugs and took them to the sink. “You’d better go and get some things together. You go in a few days.”

“Mum?”

She looked round and frowned a query.

“I’ll need you to sign for a passport.”

Louise sighed her exasperation. “How long does that take? How much will it be?”

George crossed the kitchen, and put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. “Thanks mum,” he said with a broad grin, and turned and nipped sharply out of the back door before more words could be said.


	2. In Hamburg

Spirits were raised; temporarily. “Nowhere to live” had just been changed to “I will let you stay in one of my places.”, and the five young men trooped after Koschmider along the grubby noisy street with a degree of cheer. They were still disappointed that they weren’t going to be playing at the better club further back along the street but, it was okay. They had a job, and somewhere to live.

And then - “You must be fucking joking!!”

John, of course, was at the front in the doorway, the first one there, Stu at his shoulder. These two were the only ones who could see the place, so George, Paul and Pete were at a loss as to the reason for John’s unexpectedly violent response to their new home until they pushed through the door and stood in their rooms so generously provided by Koschmider in the Bambi-Filmkunsttheater.

“The what?”

“Cinema”, their host explained.

“Shit.” This last from Paul.

“There are two rooms. The other is through there.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when John surged through the further door to the next room. Stu followed without thought; and some instinct for social survival propelled George through with them. “This one,” cried Stu, and he and George each claimed one of the three beds in there, George dropping his case onto one of them and sitting on it to make sure.

Paul and Pete stood together in the adjoining doorway. Pete just looked. The dismay from Paul was, to George, palpable.

There was no qualitative difference between the two rooms. Both had filthy concrete walls, both smelled of communal lavatories, both were dim and windowless, both were too hideous and miserable to be described. Yet the difference for Paul was that John, with his old friend Stu and baby George, were in one room, and he wasn’t. He was alone with Pete, who never spoke. Staring up at him from his place on the low cot, George found that he’d unconsciously tightened his grip on the mattress, as if Paul might suddenly come over and challenge him to his place in the room.

Which of course he didn’t. Such a display of lack of confidence, which is what it would have been, would have been out of the question for Paul McCartney. Instead, he shrugged and smiled and light-heartedly turned away from the door and dropped his bags onto the better of the two not very cosy beds. Pete, with no choice but to have the last one left, was as clearly at the bottom of the pecking order as if he’d worn a badge. He showed no sign of minding.

George meanwhile opened his case and tucked his pyjamas under the one blanket on the rickety bed. He listened to the banter between his room mates as he sat on his bed and lit a cigarette. Really, he reasoned, it was no different from when he went to live at Gambier; except that he knew it was. The flat in Gambier Terrace was Stu’s and John’s, and they’d let him have a corner of the floor – in their flat. But this room here, in the bambi-whatever it was, this wasn’t their flat. George had staked out his own equal third of the same space as John and Stu.

So, now, he just had to live up to it.


	3. The Indra

The five boys trooped into the club, four fiercely clutching their guitars, and paused at the back, gawping, there could be no other word for it, at the girl on the low stage, her scanty attire becoming increasingly scanty by the moment. None made any move towards the stage or to the backstage area, but simply stood frozen at the back, astonished at the spectacle, unsure whether to be titillated, interested, amused or just horrified. None had reached a decision on that question by the time she finished her act, with a flourish of feathers, a bow and a graceless departure from the stage. John and Paul looked at each other. “Fuck,” said John, and Paul responded with wide eyes and a shrug.

“We’re early”, said Stu.

They gazed across the room, peering through dim lighting and coils of cigarette smoke. The bar lined the far wall.

“Drink?” suggested John.

With varying degrees of bravado, whether real or assumed, they strolled across the room, winding between tables at which customers of all shapes and sizes sat slumped over drinks. A few looked up at them disparagingly as they passed. For George, it felt like the longest walk in his life. Even longer than the time he’d spent his bus money on chips and had to walk home all the way from Aintree after a party that had gone very wrong. He kept his eyes on John’s back and, possibly unconsciously, imitated the arrogant Lennon stride. He even managed to maintain the veneer of confidence as he reached the bar and met the barman’s eyes. The boys then clustered together, realising simultaneously that this was one part of their act they’d never rehearsed.

John looked at Paul. Paul looked at George, who found an interesting bar mat to examine. Paul looked at Pete and glared. Pete cleared his throat.

“Funf Biere, bitte,” he said, perhaps a little too loudly.

There was an ominous pause from the barman; but then he turned away from them and started to pour what turned out to be, unmistakably, five beers. The five customers all exhaled with relief; until the next hurdle, where their none-too-friendly host said something completely incomprehensible, but which they took, correctly, to be the price of the drinks lined up in front of them on the grubby bar.

“Who’s got some fucking money then?” snapped John, nerves making him even more edgy than usual.

Paul reached into his inside pocket and revealed the corner of a wad of notes. “I have,” he smiled serenely. At John’s look of surprise, he offered, “Allan gave it to me. He wasn’t going to give it to an eejit like you, was’e.”

The barman looked unfriendly.

George swallowed nervously.

“Pete,” hissed Paul. “How much does he want?”

If looks could have killed, Paul McCartney’s life would have ended there and then. But Pete too swallowed, turned back to the barman and asked, in a voice rather smaller and more faltering than before, “Wie viel?”

The barman barked something. Several customers looked up with interest. “Give him some fucking money,” John grated, and Paul, very aware of the inadvisability of bringing out the full wad of cash into full view, reached into his pocket and peeled a few notes off the stash at random and passed them to Pete, a desperate plea in his usually doe-like eyes. Pete placed the notes on the bar, and the five English lads on their first trip abroad collectively held their breath.

The barman stared at the notes. He picked them up and fanned them out, and then looked back up at the five anxious faces. “Senk you,” he said, and then turned and placed the notes in the till.

“He speaks fucking English!” blurted Stu.

“’Ere, where’s the change?” said John, leaning forward, but the others dragged him away to a nearby table before their sadistically-minded barman could react, and piled the precious guitars safely under the table. Limp with relief, the five Beatles to a man picked up their beer mugs and drained a good third in one gulp before pausing for breath.

“Eeyuck!”

“S’not that bad.”

“It is.”

“D’ya think it’s all they do here?”

“You fancy going and telling Happy over there you don’t like it?”

“You could ask him for a full selection of their wines.” George found himself chuckling at Paul’s joke – if it was a joke. He didn’t think the beer was that bad, just not what they were used to. He downed some more and saw that he was near the bottom of the glass.

He also saw that they were half an hour away from going on stage.

“I think I’ll ‘ave another one,” he announced, and pushed himself to his feet. “Paul, give us some cash.”

“You sure?”

”I can’t get it without money.”

“No, I mean, are you sure you want another one?”

“Why?”

“You’ve – that… ” Paul pointed at the now empty mug.  
“Who are you, me mum?”

“No! I just…”

“Can I ‘ave the money then?”

Paul blinked in surprise at the terse tone from the generally placid George, but simply shrugged and handed him one of the notes from the stash in his inside pocket.

“How much is it?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

The two boys stared at each other for a moment, and then George turned and started back towards the bar.

“Hey, George!”

George stopped and turned back to the table.

“Get us one too.”

George nodded, an irrational sense of relief that he wasn’t the only one drinking prompting a wide grin and a nod towards John, and he strode back towards the bar with double the confidence. The club was quiet, he caught the barman’s eye immediately, and held the note up. “Zwei biere bitte,” he forced himself to declare.

It worked; he returned to the table with the drinks and savoured the thanks from John as he started on the second mug. Halfway down the glass, he began to feel that it was working.

“We need to find out how much this stuff is,” said Stu. “He’s just taking the money, but we might be paying way over the odds.” He drained the last of his beer. “We probably are,” he went on.

Paul started talking about the conversion rate between Deutschmarks and pounds that he’d looked up before they left England, and George looked at him without listening to a word, enjoying the gradual sense of inebriation working up his legs. He had wanted the second drink because he was just about to go on stage and perform in a foreign country in a rough club where it looked as if they’d carve pieces off you if you hit a bum note. He’d wanted the drink because he had to keep up with all the other guys and not be the bloody baby. He’d wanted the drink just because he could. He was away from home, he could do what he liked and if he wanted to drink himself senseless that was up to him.

Not that he was anywhere near senseless after two beers. But he certainly felt a lot happier than he had before.

“English!!”  
The five all jumped and looked up with a start. Koschmider was standing at their table, legs astride and hands behind his back. He looked as though he’d accidentally mislaid his jackboots and riding crop. The boys stared up at him wide-eyed, even John temporarily silenced.

“When she finish,” he barked, gesturing towards the lady on the stage who was divesting herself of her clothing at a frightening rate, “you are on.” He then spun around and marched away, leaving behind him five cowed artistes. They exchanged glances with each other. John and George drained their drinks. Stu pushed himself to his feet and the others followed suit. They dragged the guitars out from under the table, and trailed towards the backstage area, feeling like French aristocrats on their march to the gilloutine.

 

 

“English!”

The five all jumped and looked up with a start. Herr Kommandant stood over them as they slumped around a table, guitars stacked once again underneath.

They stared.

He…smiled.

“Gut,” he said, and then gestured towards the bar with what George still thought of as his whip hand, even though he wasn’t holding a whip. “Hier!” he demanded. “Funf!” He stomped away once more. And then, to their complete astonishment, the scary barman did in a few moments bring over five of the horrible, foreign but so welcome beers and thumped them messily on the table.

“Danke,” said Paul, mustering up his manners and most appealing smile despite his raw throat and desperate exhaustion, and the other four followed suit, though without the accompanying McCartney smile. The barman nodded abruptly and left them, and five beers were once more gulped simultaneously.

“We must’ve done alright then,” ventured Paul.

“We were fucking brilliant,” said John, and George and Pete both chuckled.

“Not sure about that.” George was so tired that he forgot what he was talking about from one end of the sentence to the other, but still he doubted the verdict of brilliant.

“Bollocks. We were,” maintained John, and slurped some beer. George smiled, and nodded.

“Brilliant.”

The five lapsed into silence.

“How long did we do?” asked Stu.

There was a pause, as they attempted to calculate. “Five hours?” offered Paul.

“Shit.”

There seemed little more to be said. Drinks were drained, guitars once again reclaimed from under the table. The Beatles dragged themselves off to their hovel and bed.


	4. Pete and Prostitutes

They’d all been friends in Liverpool. George and Paul had gone hitch hiking together, holidaying, kicking about together, going to each other’s houses, seeing local groups together. Being schoolboy mates. George and John had definitely not been friends, not at first. John had made it clear that it was only George’s superior guitar technique that had enabled him, or more accurately forced him, to tolerate being seen in the company of someone he regarded as a toddler. Yet over the year since then George had begun to grow up. He had for one thing literally grown; he was taller and his face had thinned out which gave him a more mature appearance. And, perhaps more importantly, George had effectively sized up his situation within the group and determined to meet the great John Lennon head on. It was like lion-taming, he reckoned – he knew that if he showed any weakness he’d be finished. So, he countered every insult, he threw it all back and added some of his own, he grinned, he showed no fear and, bit by bit, week by week, his tactic began to yield results. Insults which had previously come his way were now more often directed elsewhere, to Colin or to Griff, and George found himself gradually and subtly accepted into John’s hallowed company; not with smiles or friendly quips, but indicated simply by the blessed absence of continual searing abuse.

The introduction of Stu Sutcliffe into the unit had affected Paul far more than it had George. Paul had found himself nudged out of his status of best friend, whilst George had never been there anyway. It was perhaps the musicianship which smoothed George’s passage through that potentially rocky personnel crisis; whoever or whatever came or went in or around the Beatles, the group needed his guitar and, for that matter, his voice, invaluable in harmonies and in solos, and George’s place was secure. Even if that place was still the baby of the group.

And that, George grimly reflected more than once, was never going to change.

So, the three became four and then, only one day before they left to come to Hamburg, four became five. They’d known Pete for ages, known his mum who started up the Casbah, but he’d never been a special friend to any of them and was there purely and simply because of his drum kit. It was not perhaps the most auspicious start for a friendship, or even a partnership. Yet George’s start had been equally tenuous and he was still there; so they all set off on that lengthy journey into the unknown in the van ready to be the Beatles, only now in Hamburg and not Liverpool.

At first, it was fine. They played on stage together, they sat around in bars afterwards together, they explored the neighbourhood together, they ate together, they laughed together, they drank together, they fell asleep together. When, in the depth of their exhaustion, they discovered prellies they knocked them back together – except Pete. He didn’t want to try them, he was okay without them. Except that he wasn’t. Then when they were all going to go to the Kiaserkeller to check out the groups there, Pete had something else to do or somewhere else to be, and he didn’t go with them. Nor the next time. And it went on like that until they realised, during a breakfast time conversation at the British Sailors Society, a place they’d found by the docks that sold proper English fry-ups and therefore felt like the promised land, that the only time there were really with Pete at all was on stage.

“Where does he go?”

“I think he’s got some bird.”

“What, always the same one?”

“I think so.” But Paul was unable to divulge the source of his information. And the others had little curiosity about the matter. Pete could do what he wanted, as long as he played drums; which he did, after a fashion.

Then came the day when Paul was able to expand on the gossip, and gleefully delivered it to George one morning over bacon and sausages and fried bread.

“She’s a prossie.”

“Eh?”

“Pete’s bird. She’s a prossie. The one he keeps going to see.”

“Must be costing him.”

“I don’t think she charges him! She just is one.”

George laughed, casually, but didn’t feel casual. That snippet of gossip, delivered by Paul over breakfast, had bothered him. And it bothered him that it had bothered him. Pete could do what he liked. Obviously. He always did anyway. But…

George couldn’t even indulge in a sigh, sitting opposite Paul. Of all people. On this, he must remain calm and indifferent. Or amused, as Paul clearly was. He decided to go for indifferent, being the easiest to fake; but Paul wasn’t fooled. He was smiling, at George. 

George frowned, and then shrugged. “What?”

“You could, you know.”

“I could what?” Although he knew perfectly well what Paul meant.

“Just… you know… find one. Dead easy.”

And here they were again, back to schooldays. It was like he’d never left; all the same feelings as he’d had back then. Those days of long, desultory stilted conversations in tents or waiting by roadsides for lifts. Unspoken competition, all the time. ‘When was the last time you…?’ and so on. ‘Have you ever…?’ Copped a feel. Got under her bra. Seen a girl naked. And so on and so on. And, of course, the big one: ‘Have you ever done it?’

There had been times when George was ahead of the game. Paul had unwillingly displayed surprise at what George had managed to do with Norma Jenkinson at that all-nighter, and that was a moment for George. And, of course, you could say anything you wanted with the right amount of confidence.

Though Norma Jenkinson had been true.

When it came to The Big One, it was always tempting to pretend, to over-egg. To lie. Tempting, but George never did. He knew Paul had; Jeez the whole world had to know when that happened. If he’d been a cockerel he’d have come into school crowing. But George had never pretended on that one. Some instinct told him that if he lied and was found out it would be even worse. No, George was forced down the route of dark mysteriousness, the cool man who wasn’t that bothered anyway. ‘Maybe, maybe not…’ That sort of thing.

Now, here in Hamburg, schooldays theoretically behind them, there was neither room nor reason for cool or mysterious. Opportunities, it would seem, were everywhere and cool and mysterious would be unnoticed at best and ridiculed at worst. All good, but…

He knew what it was. He knew exactly, and it was stupid and he hated it but he couldn’t stop it or squash it or get rid of it. Even here, where everyone did it. Including Pete, it seemed. The fact was, George just couldn’t face the thought of going with a prostitute.

And how stupid was that.

At the thought of it, immediately would come the image, as clear as if it were yesterday, of his mum and Mrs Kirby from two doors down, and that was Arnold Grove so he would have been really small, talking about how Mrs Kirby’s daughter Lil had become a - and they said the word really quiet in a sort of hiss but he’d heard it, even though he didn’t know what it meant. But he saw his mum’s face. And his mum’s face said it was something really bad. And when he asked his mum after Mrs Kirby had gone into her house and they were going towards theirs, what it was, his mum said ‘Never you mind’, and that it was forbidden by God. Well, that didn’t narrow it down much; it sometimes seemed, if you listened in Mass which he didn’t always do, as if everything was forbidden by God. And his mum often had a laugh about all the things the Father used to go on about as being sins, and his dad would laugh along with her. But she didn’t laugh about that one.

But if that was all it was, that wouldn’t be enough to put him off like this. He’d decided years ago to ditch the Catholic Church and all that stuff, and his mum’s expression about something when he was about five wouldn’t be all it took to hamstring him at the age of seventeen. At least, it shouldn’t. But he couldn’t erase either the jeering and ribbing from some of the lads at Dovedale about a girl they said was one of them. Poor Janet Thornton, she wasn’t likely in retrospect to have been a fully paid up card carrying prostitute at the age of twelve, but that wasn’t the point. It was all the things they, and he, said about what prossies did, all the unspeakable things they got up to, and all the unspeakable things that happened to the people who went with them.

He’d forgotten all the details of the conversations. It wasn’t that he was worrying specifically about what a nine year old boy said would happen to his knob if he shagged a tart. But his mum’s possibly assumed horror about Mrs Kirby’s Lil and his own genuine childish horror about what they did had, it seemed, left an indelible mark on his psyche, and now the thought of going out into the Reeperbahn and engaging one, or even acceding to the persistent requests of the ones who came into the club, made his face freeze. Other girls, non professional girls – oh yes please. Any time. But them, the working ones, he couldn’t do it.

Even if it would have meant wiping the smile off Paul’s face as they sat in the Sailors Society with breakfast. 

George just gave a small laugh.

“Really though. Why not?”

George looked at him. “When I get desperate. Then I’ll think about it.”

“And you’re not desperate now?”

George looked back at his old friend, from the vantage point of way beyond the school gates. “No,” he said. His eyes and his face were not smiling. “I’m not.”


	5. Cyn

“How's it been then, here?”

George glanced at her as they walked together towards the port. Cynthia's question was casual; her voice sounded tense. “It's been...” He paused. How do you start to describe the chaos and the intensity of their life out here? Not that George Harrison thought in terms of chaos or intensity, but he did find it hard to pick any words for it. “It's... pretty crazy,” he ventured.

“Crazy?”

Nope, he shouldn't have used that word.

“You know, long hours, busy...” George felt anxious. He really did not want to be responsible for a row between Cynthia and John, not after all he'd done this morning. If she was going to have one anyway, well, okay, but not because of him making it sound...

“Why couldn't he come with us for breakfast?”

George felt on surer ground with that question. “He's asleep,” he said.

“Well, I know that.” Her tone was that of the responsible adult humouring the imbecile, and George stopped feeling anxious and started to feel irritated.

“So why did you ask me then?”

For a moment George and Cynthia glared at one another, and George found his pace quickening so that Cynthia had to hurry to keep up. They strode in silence down an alleyway and came out next to the Sailors Society. George collected himself sufficiently to open the door for her and usher her in ahead of him, and then guided her over to an empty table on the far side of the big room.

“What do you want?” The abrupt phrase was couched in a conciliatory tone, and Cynthia's small tight smile acknowledged it.

“What is there?”

“They do full breakfast.”

“I'll have that then, ta.”

“Won't be a minute.” George walked off to the counter, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans for his money as he went, and Cynthia untied her headscarf and fluffed up her hair a little, took off her coat and hung both over the back of her chair. She was waiting, a nervous half smile on her face, when George returned precariously balancing two plates piled high with fry-up. “Here you go, hope it's ok,” he said as he plonked the plates thankfully onto the table and took his seat opposite her across the table.

“It looks great.” It looked very ordinary, but Cynthia had decided that it was to her advantage to be nice to baby George. He was at present her only link to John. And she was pleased not to be sitting on her own any more in this alarming place. “Do you come here often?” she asked, and only then realised what she'd said and how stupid it sounded, and she and George burst out laughing at the same time.

It helped warm the mood.

“Actually we do,” he nodded. “The food's cheap and normal.” As if to demonstrate, he speared half a sausage on his fork and popped it into his mouth. ”Where's Dot?”

“She's with Paul.” Cynthia managed to emphasise the word 'she's', and George inwardly winced. Another mistake. It had occurred to him whilst standing at the counter waiting for the food that he'd never actually spent any time with Cynthia without John there. He was beginning to realise why.

“He'll be here soon,” George said. “He... just takes a while to wake up. You know.” And then he really did feel stupid, as perhaps Cynthia would know better than anyone, besides possibly Mimi, how long John took to wake up. He hoped John would be VERY grateful to him for getting him out of trouble. Why did it have to be him blundering out of the Bambi just as Cynthia turned up. She'd stayed over at Astrid's mum with Dot but obviously couldn't wait to see wait to see the love of her life. George had seen her coming and thought very quickly; he'd shouted back in, “Stu! Cyn's here. I'll take her away,” and marched to meet her, friendly smile in place. “Hi Cyn! Didn't know you were coming over.” Could they have heard him from inside? He hoped so. “Cyn,” he exclaimed. “John's dead to the world and you know what he's like. You hungry? Let's go and have breakfast and meet him there!” She had very little chance to object. George had already whisked her away from the doorway and she would have had to fight to stop him. Surely Stu would have the wit to shake John awake and get rid of the two girls draped over him.

“Well... we could...”

“You wouldn't want to see it in there, you really wouldn't.” That bit was true at least. “Think of Gambier Terrace and times it by ten.” True as well. They'd all more or less got used to the stink. “We'll get some food and John'll be here in no time.” So they walked, and now they sat, and ate. “How was your crossing?”

“Horrible! I was sick.”

“So was John. You two make a right pair!”

“Weren't you?”

George shook his head and shrugged lightly. “Nah, I was okay, don't know why.”

“D'you like it here?”

George looked up from his food, knife and fork in hand, and nodded emphatically. “It's great, it really is.”

“But tiring,” put in Cynthia, but George chose to ignore the sarcastic comment, and Cynthia thought that baby George hadn't picked up on it.

“Eight hours a night non stop.”

“What???”

“Hasn't John told you?” George started to worry that he'd put his foot in it again.

“Well, yes, but...” She looked directly at him, for the first time since the conversation started. George met her gaze. “I...I didn't believe him.”

George nodded again. “It's true,” he replied, seriously. ”Not always eight. Sometimes five or six. And we do have Mondays off.”

She stared at him. He did sound serious. And, he sounded different. He sounded more confident. No, not confident, he'd always been confident, though goodness knows why. He was... more grown up?

That was it. He looked the same, though definitely thinner and paler than last time she'd seen him. Well, if they were doing eight hours a night that would be why. But his whole manner seemed different.

George regarded her steadily, which was also odd, because he'd never done that before. And then he smiled, and she wondered why.

“Look behind you,” he said. And she did, and there was John.

Cynthia Powell hurled herself to her feet, nearly sending her plate flying, and flung her arms around John and wrapped herself all around him and squealed. “John!”

Over her shoulder, John met George's eyes and mouthed the words, “Thank you.” George smiled again, and nodded. John grinned back. Stu had entered the Sailors Society with John, and he sat down next to George and lit a cigarette. “You eating?”

“Yeah,” managed John through Cynthia's frantic embrace; then Cynthia drew back.

“John! You stink!”

“I told you you wouldn't want to go in there,” said George quietly, and turned and exchanged a rueful grin with Stu.

“Stu, get us a brekkie,” commanded John, and Stu predictably pushed himself to his feet and moved across towards the counter. John took a seat at the table and Cynthia sat back down, so close to him she may as well have been on his lap. The two began to eat each other in lieu of the expected fry-ups, and George lit another cigarette. A comparative silence reigned until Stu returned to the table with the food, and all four applied themselves to their meals.

“We've got to find more”, John said indistinctly through a mouthful of fried egg. Cynthia didn't know what he was talking about, but the other boys clearly did, and the three launched themselves into a discussion about their repertoire. They didn't have enough songs for eight hours a night, John tried to explain to her, they needed to learn more. Cynthia nodded, not remotely interested but too pleased to be back with John to care, but what did intrigue her was two-fold: firstly, they were having this conversation without Paul being present, a situation which could never have arisen in the group she'd known back in Liverpool, and secondly, even more extraordinary, George was taking an equal part in the discussion. He was joining in, John was deferring to him now and then, and Stu, John's beloved favourite, was also according a degree of respect to George she'd never seen before. The pecking order which she'd taken for granted back home seemed to have dissolved.

Maybe this was what was different about baby George. Maybe, for some reason which she'd missed out on since they'd been away, he wasn't baby George any more.  
She stared at him with interest. He felt her gaze, and stared back at her. With indifference.

Cynthia wondered what on earth had been going on, here in Hamburg, since they'd been away.


	6. Random Interlude

It was probably the cold that woke him up. One doesn’t always know what wakes one up, you just wake up, but a few moments after waking George realised that he was freezing cold. He automatically curled up tight, and tugged his blanket closely around himself and drew his feet up so that they were covered up too instead of sticking out at the end of the bed, but he was still chilled through.

Yet, in a moment, that was not his main problem. As he lay, curled up like a dormouse but not so cosy, he was suddenly assailed by a wave of homesickness so acute that it made him gasp. His eyes shut tight and one cold hand unclenched itself to cover his face. And then he pulled the cover up over himself entirely. He was heartsick. He was alone. He was hundreds of miles away from his home - well he actually had no idea how far he was from home but it felt like hundreds of miles – he was cast adrift in a tiny stone cell; he was alone. He felt so alone. Coursing through his mind were the images, melted and merged together into one indistinct chord of home, of his bedroom, of his family, of his kitchen, of his mum. That all embracing concept that was his mum.

George lay in foetal huddle under his blanket, and found himself rocking in unmitigated distress.

It went on for ever. It went on for the rest of his life, It went on until Paul burst into the room a few minutes later. “Hey, Geo, coming to the Sailors? I’m starved.” Then Paul looked at the blanket-covered mass and drew the wrong conclusion. “Georgie!! Wake up! Come out for nosh. We’re on stage in three.”

A moment passed, and then the top of a head and one eye appeared from under the blanket. “Huh?” A pause. “Paul?”

“Who the fuck do you think it is?”

George blinked, but didn’t move, and it slowly began to dawn on Paul that there might be something amiss. He stepped the three feet from the door to the bed, and leaned over the huddle. “You okay?”

The rest of George’s head emerged from under the blanket. Dark eyes stared, wide, sad.

“George! You ill?” He prodded the blanket-covered shoulder. “Wassup?”

George shook his head. He then tore his eyes from Paul, and moved them to take in the rest of the room. Stu was gone, John was gone. “Wassa time?” he mumbled.

“Two. Cummon. We’re meeting the others down there. And John’s had some ideas for another set we can do. Gerrup! What’s up with you?”

What was up with him? Nothing, George reflected. He was in the same place he’d been for weeks, he was with his friends, they were going to talk music, he was going to eat, he was going to drink, he was going to play music. He cleared his throat to make sure his voice was okay. “Nothing,” he said, sounding confident and reasonably grown up, to his relief. “I’m fine. Give us a minute.” He pushed himself to a sitting position, rubbed the heels of both hands fiercely over his eyes, and then pushed the blanket aside. Paul plonked himself down on Stu’s bed to wait, and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and held it up.  
“Want one?”

“In a minute.” As Paul lit one for himself George reached for his trousers and pulled them on over his shorts, and then groped for and found his teeshirt and wriggled his way into that too. Socks, inside his boots. Boots. He stood, steadily, slid his arms into his leather jacket and then ran his fingers through his hair and pushed it upwards into something approximating his usual style. He shoved his hands into his pockets and faced his friend, head slightly to one side. “Okay.”

Paul climbed back to his feet, and the two walked to the door and out of the tiny, cold, ugly and foul smelling box of a room into the alleyway beyond. “You okay?” Paul asked, still a little puzzled by the indefinable malaise which had seemed to have paralysed his friend for a while back in the room. “You were a bit strange there.”

George ventured a smile, and found that it worked. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied. “Just tired.” He turned to look at Paul as they made their way along the noisy street. “Where’s that ciggie you said?”

He walked, he smoked, he chatted. He was baffled. He now felt completely fine, not even subdued, not even shaken up. He had no idea where that terrible and disabling grief had come from, or why, and he felt ashamed. He’d been a stupid baby. Somewhere in his subconscious mind he knew that that wave of acute sadness had nothing babyish about it, but, consciously, he couldn’t or wouldn’t realise that. Being homesick was babyish.

However, he reflected as they stepped into the welcoming warmth of the Sailors Society, his friend John’s voice already in evidence rising above the others’ as he shouted good-natured abuse at another customer, no-one would ever know, so that was alright. He wasn’t any kind of baby. He was one of the group.


	7. On Stage

“Vielen Dank. Und danke fur das Bier! Unser nachstes Lied wird sein...” George paused in his halting Liverpudlian-laced German to look over at John and Paul to confirm what their next song would be. Paul was on his knees at the front of the stage smiling at a girl and making sign language to suggest that she meet him outside in three hours. John was concentrating on shaking prellies into his palm prior to knocking them back down his throat. George watched that process for a moment, during which time he'd forgotten what he wanted John for. Four pints of that fizzy beer on an empty stomach tended to do that to the concentration, and the prellies seemed like a good idea. He hadn't wanted that last pint and had tried to say thanks but no thanks, but the expression on the face of the generous donor had persuaded him that it would be better to shut up and drink up; George had forced it down. His head swam, he felt unsteady. His last pill had been hours ago, it seemed.

He turned back to the audience and smiled, his shy lop-sided smile that he'd come to realise most of the girls watching them loved. “Einen Moment” he said into the mic and crossed the stage to John, who was pocketing the tube of prellies as he drained one of the pints on the tray on the stage.

To his dismay, George saw another tray being passed over towards them. And this wasn't beer, it was schnapps. “John!”

John looked at him over the rim of the pint glass.

“Give us some.” George pointed to the pocket into which he'd seen the prellies disappearing, and John dragged the tube back out and dropped it into George's outstretched palm.  
”Ta.”

George thumbed two pills out of the tube, reconsidered and took yet another one and swallowed them altogether, dry. He hadn't quite the stomach for the schnapps yet, and hoped he could put it off for a while without anyone getting offended. Having someone get offended with you round here could mean risking having your fingers broken. He turned back to the front of the stage, and then remembered that he still had no idea what their next number was. “John!”

“What?”

“What's next?”

“Ah... Tutti Frutti.”

“Paul!!”

Presumably, Paul's assignation arrangements were completed, as he was now on his feet. “What?”

“Tutti Frutti.”

Paul grinned, and swung around to the mic. Without further pause, he launched in, full throated. “Bop bopa-a-lula a whop bam boo, Tutti frutti, oh Rudy...”  
The others fell in behind him, automatically, immediately, resoundingly, and the audience responded with a roar. George found the chords as Pete floundered into place, and he waited for the pills to kick in. They weren't kicking in. Should he have some more? Paul was doing his nut on the other side of the stage, the drinks were on a tray on the floor, the man was looking at him, the pills weren't kicking in. He looked at Paul raving through the number. He blinked; he was aware of his eyes widening slightly and his teeth clenching. He felt a small smile quirking the corner of his mouth.

The chords flowed easily.

The pills were kicking in.

 

 

An hour later

“Gonna write a little letter, gonna mail it to ma local DJ.”

George sang confidently, through a mouth that felt as if it were full of melting foam. 

“It’s a rockin’ little record I want my jockey to play.”

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Paul, grinning, stamping, playing to their audience. He wasn’t sure where John was, so he must be behind him somewhere. He didn’t want to turn and look…

“Roll over Beethoven gotta hear it again today.”

…because he didn’t want to take his eyes off the three sailors just in front of the stage a few feet away. A fight was brewing. You never knew where that might go. Best to be ready. 

“You know ma temperature’s risin’, the jukebox blown a fuse.”

The first punch had been thrown. The other customers were drawing back to give the antagonists room, leering, guffawing; two of the sailors were on to the third. 

“Ma heart’s beatin’ rhythm and ma soul…”

George stepped back sharply. His boots were new, well, new to him. He didn’t want them splattered with any of the blood which suddenly sprayed up from the unfortunate third sailor’s crushed nose and split lip.

“…keeps a singin’ the blues.”

John was next to him now, howling encouragement, or maybe just howling. The handful of prellies he’d seen John wash down with several swigs of lager meant that John would not right now know what he was doing or saying. Fortunately, when he was in these states he still did the music. Despite screaming like a banshee he was miraculously still keeping time to the song.

“Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news.”

Paul was laughing so much that he fell over, but he pushed himself upright again and carried on dancing to the beat and playing his guitar. None of the audience had noticed or, if they had, they didn’t care as the floorshow provided by the three sailors was more engrossing. George met Paul’s eyes across the stage; Paul’s wide-eyed rictus stare, George knew, matched his own exactly. His mouth was still full of foam. He needed another beer just to be able to swallow.

“I got a rockin’ pneumonia, I need a shot of rhythm and blues.”

The waiters were coming over and they laid about the three sailors quite indiscriminately with coshes. The rest of the audience roared approval. The three were manhandled out of the club.

“I think I got it off the writer sittin’ down by the rhythm review. Roll over Beethoven, rockin’ in two by two.”

The audience had returned its joint attention to the boys on the stage, clapped along, stamped along, and the group responded by upping their game even more. George forgot the foam in his mouth and throat, Paul danced Chuck Berry steps across the stage and John carried on doing what John was doing and the club loved them.

They’d been on stage for three hours. They had five more to do.


	8. Photos and Astrid's House

George enjoyed the photo session. It was completely different to any other times his picture had been taken. There’d been snaps at home during family do’s and parties, but no-one expected him to do anything special for those, they’d just taken the pictures. He remembered at one family party lining up his beloved guitars on the sofa for a proper picture, but his idiot uncle took the photo just when he was taking a swig of beer from a bottle. His mum thought that was funny. Good picture of the guitars though. There’d been a couple with the group, but they had to smile at the camera for those, so they were a bit cheesy.

But Astrid’s pictures were something completely different. She never said “smile” so they didn’t. None of them, not even Paul. And the less they grinned at the camera the more pleased she seemed to be, so by the end of it they were all glaring like mass murderers and she said “Great.” Well, “Sehr gut” really, but that was what she meant. But, it was like they could be themselves. He could be himself. No expectations, no need to put on an act.

George could tell that John was really liking it all, probably because he could look mean. Though in a way he just looked fed up.

Then she said, “Sie kommen in mein Haus?” and no-one knew what she was talking about. But it sounded as if it was something to do with a house. Stu was obviously desperate to go with her wherever she was suggesting; he’d have taken a trip to the docks and jumped in if she’d said. So, after a brief confab, everyone thought they might as well go along and see what happened. 

There wasn’t much room in the little VW Beetle. But she had the roof down so that made it feel less cramped. Stu took the front passenger seat as if by divine right, so John, Paul and George squeezed into the back; of course they put George in the middle because he was the thinnest. They set off from the old dilapidated fairground with all its rusting iron and dirt, and she drove them out of the area they knew, away from the clubs, the bars, the greasy cafes, towards houses with gardens and nice shops. George stared at his first sight of ordinary German people who weren’t strippers or sailors or sadists disguised as waiters. He saw a woman walking with two children and pointed. “Kids!” he said, and John looked at him as if he was soft in the head because there was nothing special about children, they were like any other children. But George was aware that they hadn’t seen anything even remotely resembling ordinary since they’d arrived on these shores, and he stared in fascination as he realised that foreign people looked, in fact, just like English people.

Then, as Astrid drove on, even John and Paul showed signs of interest, as the roads became broader and even cleaner and the houses grew larger and grander and even Stu took his eyes away from Astrid long enough to gawp at what was, for the group from working class Liverpool, millionaire’s row. “Shit,” remarked Paul, as the car drew up outside a palatial double fronted villa-looking place and Astrid parked and turned off the engine. She turned to Stu and smiled, and the three in the back waited for their private moment of longing bliss to end so that they could all get out.

 

 

About thirteen hours later

George snuggled down under the bedclothes, as well as one could snuggle with only one blanket. His head was swimming, courtesy of the shots of schnapps he’d knocked back to counteract the prellies, he felt physically tired after seven hours on stage, and there was a happy smile on his face because he felt good and he was having a good time listening to the relentless banter between his two friends, John and Stu. The bot-tom line seemed to be that John considered it his rightful place to attack everything about Astrid, everything about Stu and everything about any possible relationship be-tween them. The subtext, clear to Stu, and to George from under his blanket, was that John was jealous as hell. It would be difficult to imagine how his comments and suggestions could possibly get any more obscene. At one particularly extreme and anatomically impossible suggestion George chuckled out loud.

Stu’s response was sanguine; he was no doubt shielded from the rawness of John’s aggression by his own cloud of happiness. The connection between Stu and Astrid was palpable, and John’s attack could do no more than batter ineffectually at the euphoric bubble surrounding the blissful bassist.

George lay, drowsy, drunk and comfortable and, as the war of words continued on the other side of the small room, he reflected on his own impressions of their strange day. The photo session had been fab. The excursion into posh Hamburg had been a real eye-opener; he’d just assumed that the whole of the city consisted of danger and decay and unmitigated sleaze. And then, there was Astrid’s house.

George thought that she was just weird. Why would anyone want a completely black bedroom? It looked daft. If you got up in the middle of the night you’d bash your feet or your head or your elbow trying to find your way out. It was stupid. It was also stupid how different that room was to the rest of the house. The rest was all posh and carpeted and grand, and then you walk into that black hole. He’d stared at it, and then glanced at her and she was looking at him with that look he recognised from some of his old aunties – he had many – who he only saw at Christmas or weddings or things like that. In other words, she thought he was some kind of baby. She didn’t have to say so, she couldn’t have done anyway because she didn’t speak English, but he recognised that look. He’d seen it all his life. There were John and Paul the swaggering big guys, and him.

George had no wish to swagger. George didn’t feel any need to swagger; he wasn’t trying to make any kind of impression on anyone, which John and Paul certainly were. Why would he be knocking himself out trying to impress some strange German bird who thought it was cool to paint your room black and cut your hair really short like a bloke’s. No thanks.

However, her mum was lovely. She’d cooked them up a fantastic lunch and fussed around them, and she didn’t look at him as if he was about five. She looked kind and as if she could be a laugh.

She seemed a bit like his mum.

With thoughts of mumsy ladies and Lennon obscenities and old iron fairgrounds swirling gently around his inebriated head, George finally drifted off to sleep.


	9. More Photos

“It is good for you?”

George nodded. “Mmmm”

“It is good.”

George glanced up again, and nodded again, and returned his attention again to his plate which had until five minutes ago held fried egg, sausages, bacon and toast. Now it only contained half a sausage and one rasher of bacon. He tore a piece of bread off the slice on his side plate and wiped up the remains of the egg, pushing all the bread into his mouth at one time. He chewed, and tried to smile at the same time, but the smile only hit his eyes, which crinkled appreciatively. “Hmmm,” he managed.

Jurgen smiled happily, and took a sip of his black coffee. He hadn’t wanted food, but he’d known his companion would have been desperate for it and he’d been right. The full breakfast had been consumed as though inhaled. Jurgen watched as George reached for the big chunky mug of tea and gulped it down with the last of his meal. 

“Great. Fab. Thank you!” The mug of tea was deposited on the table top with a satisfied thud. “I needed that,” continued George, unnecessarily. He looked up at his benefactor across the grimy table.

“We take photos?”

George looked steadily at Jurgen, and the German felt the gaze, felt inspected. He felt unsure; and wondered how that could be. He had bought breakfast for this gauche, naïve teenager, this grubby and rough-mannered boy from across the sea, this working class lout. He had chosen this one, out of that group of five equally grubby rough-mannered boys from across the sea. Off the stage, he had no interest in the others, even though on stage they were utterly mesmerising and compelling. But offstage? John was, frankly, too frightening. Paul was…too charming? Stu was Astrid’s. Pete was as detached and boring as it was possible to be. 

And there was George. 

Jurgen picked up his coffee cup for another sip, but the cup was empty. And he’d known that, but he’d tried to take the sip as a deflection against the dark gaze from across the table. How could that be?

George had no such distractions, and seemed to need none. He’d finished his tea and his food, and he was simply sitting, relaxed, elbows on the table. His just-lit cigarette nestled between two long graceful and grubby fingers, the smoke coiling up into the fuggy air. Even in the harsh fluorescent light of the sailors’ café, his startling bone structure and finely formed mouth and full lips cried out, to Jurgen, for portraits, for close shots; for close attention.

Jurgen looked into the large dark eyes, and saw that they were not the eyes of a rough mannered lout. But then, he must have known that. When he’d asked George to meet him this morning. To take pictures.

Howls of derisory laughs had greeted George when he’d told them what Jurgen had asked.

“Fucking ‘ell, Georgie, I hope you get well paid. You can get a fortune for that sort of job.”

“Don’t turn your back on him.”

“If you don’t make it with the guitar Georgie, you’ve got a great little earner with him. Play your cards right…”

“Tomorrow? I’m free tomorrow…”

Paul had seemed so surprised that it was George and not he who’d been invited. Paul never expected his little brother George to be the focus of anyone’s attention. “Nah, you’re alright. He said me.”

“Seriously George…”

George sat calmly across the table from his new German friend. He enjoyed the replete feeling following his first big meal in a long time, and he reflected on the expression in the German’s eyes. He had seen that expression before, from a man. He wondered what it was about him that queers seemed to like. God knows. But he knew somehow that this wasn’t going to turn nasty. The guy just fancied him; and it would be great to get some good photos. 

He smiled. “Where would you like to go?”

Jurgen beamed as he hoisted himself to his feet and gathered up his precious camera. “I have found the exact right place,” he said in his odd English. “It is by the sea. You come?”

George chuckled as he too stood up and gestured gallantly towards the door. “Is it far?”

“I have bike.”

“You have bike. That’s good then!” The two young men walked together out of the noisy clattery café and into the clearer air of the street, and Jurgen led the way towards his bike.


	10. Astrid's Again, and the Girl With Green Eyes

“Ein Tafelteller.” 

The matronly German lady handed the dripping plate to George, who took it and began to dry it with the already damp tea towel. “Ein Tafelteller,” he repeated obediently.

“Ein anderer Tafelteller.”

“Ein anderer Tafelteller.” Whilst drying the second plate, he cast a sideways sly glance at the lady, and treated her to his slow, lopsided smile. 

She smiled back. And blushed.

“Vier Loffel,” she announced.

“Nein,” George answered.

She looked at him in surprise. Her eyebrows expressed the surprise.

“Funf Loffel,” he said, fanning out the spoons to show that there were indeed five and not four. The lady burst out laughing.

“Sie haben vollkommen Recht!”

The kitchen door swung open a little further and Paul came in. He looked pink, and damp, and scrubbed, and he grinned at Astrid’s mum before saying to George, “Your turn.” He then stooped to push his pile of filthy clothes into the washing machine.

They’d tossed a coin to see who would go first for the bath, and George was last. He didn’t mind. It meant he wouldn’t have anyone pounding on the bathroom door saying he was taking too long. So John and Paul had in turn soaked and scrubbed and shampooed, while he’d helped Astrid’s mum with the washing up and put up with her trying to teach him German words. She seemed to like him. And he was used to helping mums with washing up. He smiled at Astrid’s mum, and turned and left the kitchen, for all he knew leaving Paul to finish the drying up. He padded up the lushly carpeted stairs and slipped into the bathroom.

His friends had left it in a terrible state, as anyone with any sense would have expected, with water all over the floor, wet towels left in pools of damp and the bath filthy, yet this was luxury compared to the Bambikino and George barely noticed. He ran hot water into the bath and, whilst it was filling, pulled off his grubby, sweat-encrusted clothes and left them in a heap on the floor. He climbed into the bath as soon as there was enough water for him to sit in it and let the rest of it fill around him as he lay back and savoured the sensation of freshness and unhurried pampering.

He dunked his head under the water, and shampooed his hair and rubbed fiercely and vigorously and then dunked again to get the soap out. He lay in the hot water, and leaned his head back against the back of the bath, and his enjoyment was marred only by the knowledge that he would soon have to get out again. But he was last, so he didn’t have to hurry. He relaxed.

This bath, as well as being more enjoyable than he’d have thought an ordinary bath could be, was essential. He’d been worrying, and this invitation to the house had come at just the right time. He’d been so anxious to get clean that he’d even contemplated just turning up at the house, with a towel under his arm, as if he was going to the local swimming pool, and begging for a wash. Thing is, he’d more or less worked up the courage to ask this girl out, whatever that meant in this crazy place where he spent more or less all his waking hours “out”, but he couldn’t do it reeking like a tramp. She looked like she had some standards, and these days he fell way below anything that he could call standards. 

He didn’t even know her name.

 

She had green eyes.

You couldn't see that across the club, in the dim lighting, but he could see it when he looked up from his guitar and saw that she'd moved to the front near the stage. She was standing with the two other girls, all with drinks in hand, and all three were looking up at him. And she was the prettiest. Maybe. Or maybe she wasn't actually prettier than the other two; but he liked her face best. And her smile. And her green eyes. 

He’d noticed her quite a while ago actually, but she didn’t generally go to the front; she and her friends usually grabbed a table near the back, in the corner, and they’d sit together and laugh and talk and tap their feet. He never saw them dance though. Not that that mattered, but they didn’t. And he didn’t really know why he noticed her. But he found his eyes drawn to her, and her friends of course, whenever he noticed they were in. Tuesdays; they came on Tuesdays. And then he looked up one day and she was near the front and they were looking at him. What was really good was that he was singing right then. Three Cool Cats. So he sang it to her, and she smiled at him.

They started to come more often, not just on Tuesdays. After that, he always sang his solos to her, and when he did her smile grew brighter and the green eyes glowed.

“Who’s the bird, George?”

“Fuck off.”

“When’re you going to talk to her?”

When indeed?

When he was clean.

 

And that was now.

He pulled the plug and clambered out of the bath. 

All three had brought a change of clothes. Stu more or less lived there now so he always had his stuff there, and Pete had gone off somewhere, so only John, Paul and himself were taking advantage of the rare chance to clean up. George rubbed himself as dry as he was able with the one small dry towel that was left, and then got dressed and went downstairs again. He squeezed his filthy stage-wear into the washing machine in the kitchen, and nodded to Astrid’s mum, who was still finishing the washing up. Perhaps Paul hadn’t stayed to help after all. “Danke,” he said to her and smiled. She beamed back at him.

George slipped into the sitting room. Astrid and Stu were sitting close together on the sofa, his arm around her and her legs curled up next to her. At the other end of the sofa sat Paul; he was leafing through the pages of a large book on surrealist art which he’d taken from a shelf and was offering commentary on each print. John was sprawled across the carpet with his back against an armchair and his booted feet crossed at the ankles. He was offering commentary on Paul’s commentary. The sense of competition was bubbling relentlessly just below the surface. George quietly and smoothly lowered himself onto a floor cushion in a corner. 

The conversation about Magritte and Dali and their comparative merits rumbled on. At least you could see what Magritte was painting. But it was a load of rubbish. No, it was there to fool you, to make you think you were looking at something you weren’t looking at. Paul was leaning forward to argue. His face was earnest and serious, eyes wide, left hand gesticulating. Paul was making the point that he was an earnest and serious student of art. John was clearly indifferent to Paul’s seriousness, as he leaned his head back against the armchair and blew smoke at the ceiling. He took the opportunity to point out to Paul that he, not Paul, had been at Art College. Paul countered with the fact that he had studied Art A Level and, unlike John, he’d worked at it. Yeah, but what was the point of a picture you had to work at?

Astrid didn’t understand a word that was being said, on this lazy afternoon in her mother’s sitting room, and she didn’t care either. She was wrapped in Stu’s arms and was comfortable and content. Stu did understand what they were saying and was clearly amused by the conversation; he had the girl he loved in his arms and was also comfortable, and also content to let his friends snipe at each other about the subject he knew far better than both of them put together. The two of them watched the performance being played out in front of them; and performance it was. Each of the young men was working on developing and demonstrating the persona which would in fact be amplified and publicised to an unthinkable degree over the years to come. Astrid watched them; and then her eyes turned to George.

He was sitting on a cushion on the floor, thin arms around one raised leg and his chin resting on his knee. He wore jeans and a white teeshirt, his feet bare, and his hair, usually swept up and gelled and starched into its usual ted style, was falling loose across his forehead. Divested of his customary aggressive stage clothes, he looked impossibly young. He looked like a schoolboy which, had he not so determinedly turned his back on formal education, he still would be. He too was watching Paul and John, his eyes moving from one to the other as they uttered and pronounced; and then they moved across the room and met Astrid’s gaze.

And Astrid inwardly paused, surprised. Those large dark eyes were not the eyes of the little boy, the sweet child, das liebchen Kind, the box in which she’d placed him when she’d first invited them to her home. His eyes met hers, coolly and appraisingly, and then an eyebrow rose and his expression could only have been described as sardonic. Amused. In fact, dismissive. Little George was utterly unimpressed by the play acting of his band-mates. The subtle half smile and the momentary lowering of the long eyelashes let her know that that was them and this was him and he was not they. They, the small half smile said, were sometimes idiots. 

His gaze held hers.

George, Astrid realised for the first time, was very much his own person. Was every bit as confident as Paul and as John. He simply didn’t bother to shout about it. 

Astrid smiled back at him, complicitly, and the small half smile turned into his familiar, lop sided and so endearing grin.

 

 

And, in the end, she was the one who asked him out. Sort of, well, she was the one who finally instigated a conversation. Perhaps she was getting fed up of waiting. She’d pushed to the front and smiled up at him and held his gaze, and made it quite clear that she expected some kind of reciprocation from him. He smiled down at her, and then walked to the front of the stage and knelt down to face her. It was in the middle of a number and there was a solo due in a few seconds but he knew the others wouldn’t mind. They’d done it themselves often enough, just pissed off somewhere else and then come back in a while. He smiled at her, shyly.

“Hello,” he said. A dazzling start.

“Hello.”

What was wrong with him? He’d no trouble chatting up girls at home…

“My name is Edith.”

Well, that saved him having to work out how to ask her in German. “Hello Edith. I’m George.”

She let out a peel of laughter, which he found incredibly attractive. “I know!”

He moistened his lips. This was stupid. What kind of chat up lines would work here? He knew exactly how often she came here. She already knew his job; and his name ap-parently. He could offer to buy her a drink – but there were pints lined up on the stage and she already had a drink in her hand. But he wanted to see her. Somewhere else, out of here. Just her and him.

So… “Can we meet up sometime, somewhere else?” 

There. He’d said it. And watched the green eyes glow again. “Yes. That would be nice.” They looked at each other for some long moments, until she saved him again. “A walk?”

“A walk would be fab.”

“Fab?” The pretty brows creased in confusion.

“Very nice.” He watched her face clear in understanding, and pushed on while he was ahead. “Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Where?” 

“At the park, at the gate.”

“The gate of the park. Two o’clock.”

“Two o’clock, tomorrow.”

George grinned again, this time with no artifice but just genuine pleasure. “Fab. I mean… very nice.” She laughed. “I have to go and sing now.”

“Too fucking right,” came the comment from behind him, but mercifully she ignored it and nodded at him. “I will see you soon.”

“You will. Bye.” She bestowed on him a farewell smile and turned and walked away. George too turned, back to the stage, and even those erstwhile relentless friends had not the heart to try and squash the evident happiness glowing deep within in his dark eyes.

 

They did meet and they did walk, around the park and along the water’s edge at the dock. They could talk too, as her English was a lot better than Astrid’s and so they could just – chat. At first George employed all the devices he knew from home to im-press her, the cute smile, the sideways glances, the faux innocence, but gradually his confidence grew and he dropped them all and just talked. When asked, he told her about his family and his house, and, when asked, she told him about her mother and her sister and her job. An anxiety which had murmured and insinuated just at the edge of his conscious mind was thereby brought into the light and blown away, when he es-tablished once and for all that Edith was not what his mother and aunts called a “working girl”; not a prossie. They were in the seediest part of Hamburg, you never knew, and she had come into his club. But she worked in a shoe shop and she came in because she and her friends liked music, and then, apparently because she liked him. As they strolled he ventured to take her hand and she smiled and glowed, and then he slid an arm around her and then he kissed her, and felt ludicrously happy. He asked if she had to get back at any special time and she said no. So they just stayed together through the afternoon, and found somewhere to eat. She liked Chinese food so they went to the place he and the other boys had found and ate and talked and drank.

And drank some more and then went to a bar she knew and found a corner table where they talked and snuggled and she bought him a drink, which he found very fun-ny as girls didn’t usually buy him drinks. She wasn’t trying to leave. She wasn’t finding reasons, her mother wasn’t expecting her in, she hadn’t promised to meet her friends. They had met by the park at two o’clock and it was now late and dark and they were still together.

He wasn’t having to work very hard at this.

He slung his arm around her neck and drew her closer to him. She snuggled back. He leaned forward again to pick up his drink from the table, and when he leaned back she snuggled again without him having to do anything to encourage it. He took another sip of his beer, and turned to look at her. “Another drink?” he asked. 

“No, thank you,” she said, except that the ‘thank’ always came out as ‘senk’. “I still have some.”

He nodded at her and, as he was facing her, and close to her, he leaned forward the few necessary inches and kissed her again. And she kissed back. She really kissed back. So they kissed for some time. And by the end of the kiss George was in some difficulties. He crossed his legs, hoping the action looked casual.

It may have done. But she didn’t help matters. He felt her hand stray into his lap, and linger. So, however casual his leg crossing may have looked, she certainly discovered the true situation at that point. He swallowed, and looked into her eyes.

She smiled at him. And, if that smile wasn’t inviting, then he wasn’t … whatever he was. 

He swallowed, and took a deep breath. “Would you like to go?”

Without breaking her gaze, she nodded. Her hand was still in his lap and it was sending definite messages. He slid his arm back from around her neck, shifted away and got to his feet, and then held out his hand to her. She stood up next to him, and took the hand. They left their drinks, and left the bar, and once outside on the street George put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close again. 

“We go to your flat, yes?” She asked, in a sort of husky whisper.

Speech was difficult. Coherent thought was difficult. He swallowed again, but his throat was dry. All he could do was nod at her; but then knew, as much as he hated to say it, as much as he’d have given his guitar to avoid saying it, he would have to say it. He had to. It was only fair. “It isn’t a flat, really. It’s just a room. And… a horrible room really. And…”   
This was the hard part but he had to say it. He was a good decent boy and he had to say it….”the other guys might be there. From the band. I haven’t got my own room.”

He’d said it. He’d been the decent boy he was. He’d thrown away his chances. But it would have been pretty unpleasant if he hadn’t and she’d…

“In zet case,” he heard her say through the buzzing in his head and the disappointed screaming in his mind, “we will have to be quiet.”

George stopped walking, so she stopped too and turned to look up at him. They stood, facing each other in the brazen, deafening unforgiving street. He still held her hand. He was still the decent boy. He had to say the next bit. “Are you sure?”

Her green eyes met his brown ones, and she nodded, and smiled again.

They carried on walking, his arm back around her shoulders, protectively. She snaked her own arm around his waist, and so he had to stop walking and kiss her again. Until she broke away, and laughed. “Come on! We’ll never get there!” 

George didn’t know how he continued that well-known walk back to the Bambikino, but he paused at the door of their space, you couldn’t call it a room, and said, “They might be in there, asleep. Do you…?”

In answer, she put a finger across his lips to silence him, pushed open the door, and they slipped inside. 

It was quiet, and dark, and they were there but he could hear them breathing so they were all asleep. Pete, and John, and he wasn’t sure about Paul. For one terrible moment all his emotions rose up in him in one and he thought he might be sick. But he wasn’t, and instead guided her the few feet to his bunk, and gently urged her to lie down there. She kicked off her shoes, so did he, and they lay facing each other and he yanked the one blanket across them both, and then raised himself on one elbow and leaned across her as she encircled him with her arm and pulled him down to her.

She knew what she was doing. Thank God. He forgot his nerves, forgot worrying he’d do it all wrong, forgot everything except her hands on him undoing his trousers and sliding inside to grasp him, and the feel of her thighs under his own hand and the wetness when he managed to tug the panties away and delve into her. And then he moved on top of her and she guided him in, thank God again. And then…

Oh fuck. 

Oh my god.

It didn’t take long. He was seventeen and this was his first time. But he remembered what he’d read in his auntie’s encyclopaedia when she wasn’t watching what he was reading those times his family visited, and he touched her there and she seemed to like it judging by the sound she made. But, it didn’t last long.

He lay, over her, breathing hard and stroking her damp hair back. He kissed her again.

“Whoop Whoop!!”

“Attaboy Georgie!”

There was clapping. And cheering. George looked around blearily, and the three bastards were sitting up in their bunks and cheering and applauding him; and he would have liked to kill them all. Every one. Slowly. Painfully. He closed his eyes, and wondered how he would live through this moment.

Except that he did, because she was laughing too. 

“Your friends are happy for you, yes?”

George looked down at her, her smile in the dim light, and she gave him another hug. 

Maybe they were. Yes. Maybe they actually were.

George smiled back at her, and then rolled over to lie next to her and hold her tightly. “Fuck off you bastards! Some of us need to sleep.”

Chuckles reached him from around the tiny room, and George smiled into her hair and buried his face in her neck. She held him tight. 

He was a happy man.


	11. Visions

His happy state continued – life maintained its previous routine of perform and sleep and eat but now the added dimension, previously closed to him, lifted him onto a new level of confidence, of equality with the others. Well, with Paul; and George Harrison was even seen to smile more on stage. The difference was however largely in his head, and meanwhile the group continued as before and got better and louder and tighter and the customers continued to love them, in spite of or perhaps because of their unorthodox presentation.

“Thank you, thank you, now fuck off.” John acknowledged the applause and yells of their audience at the end of one typical night.

“Thank you very much,” added Paul, with an appeasing smile, even though none of their adoring punters seemed in any way offended by John’s unusual stage patter. George smiled and nodded, his attention on his guitar rather than on anyone else, and carefully lifted the strap over his head.

“Seeya,” came a voice from the other side of the club, and John looked up in time to see Pete disappearing out of the far door. John shrugged.

“Fuck off then,” he said into dead space. He looked at Paul. “Drink?”

Paul too was taking his guitar off, and he looked up and nodded. “Where?”

“Kaiserkeller?”

“Yeah, okay. George?”

“Give us a minute,” and George hopped down from the low stage and headed towards the door that led out to the toilets.

“Stu?” asked John, but his friend pointed to the door through which Pete had just left. Astrid was standing quietly in the shadows. Stu smiled apologetically at John and shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, you can fuck off too.” But there was no animosity in John’s voice and he too smiled at his friend before turning back towards Paul. Across the club a door slammed, and George bounced back towards the two remaining Beatles.

“Ok then. Where’s Stu?”

“Astrid.”

George nodded. The three stowed their guitars at the back under the stage as always, and then turned and strolled together out of the club. A few punters were still sitting slumped over their tables nursing the dregs of their drinks and they looked up at the boys as they passed and nodded – high praise from that clientele. Lights were so low they were nearly off, the bar staff were wiping glasses and straightening mats, a car horn sounded from outside, someone gave a sharp shriek that could have signalled anything and which was ignored by everyone inside the club.

It was three am.

The Beatles had been playing onstage for seven hours. Yet, no-one felt anywhere near tired enough to think of retreating to the dump they lived in. Prellies were still buzzing through their system, eyes were wide and darting about, fingers were tapping, gum was being vigorously chewed. They stomped out of the front doors of the Indra and, hands bunched in pockets and shoulders hunched, they stalked in step along the Grosse Freiheit and turned into the Kaiserkeller, the club they’d wanted to play in when they first arrived, the one they knew would still be fairly lively at this time of night. Or morning. Such distinctions now meant little to the three lads from Liverpool. They moved together, confidently, through the dingy entrance hall and into the club, almost as dark and closed up as the one they’d just left, but a band still on stage and the bar still dispensing drinks. Paul and George sat at down a table near the stage while John got the beers in. It was his turn and, astonishingly, he’d remembered and, even more astonishingly, paid up without protest. 

They were all in a good mood. The evening and night had swung effortlessly, they’d played well and they knew they had; to a man they felt on top of their game. John returned to the table and thumped the drinks down in front of them and each grabbed one and took a long swig before relaxing back into their chairs. “To us,” said Paul and raised his glass again. George grinned as he too downed some more of the German fizz. 

“We did the right thing,” he said.

“What d’ya mean?”

“Coming to Germany.”

“Shit, yeah.” John lit a cigarette, and George held out a hand for one; John passed it and they both lit up. “We’re the best here. We’ll be the best there when we get back.”

“They won’t know what’s hit ‘em,” Paul put in, lighting a cigarette of his own. He leaned forward, both elbows on the table, his usual charming grin lighting his face. “They’ll all be booking us. We’ll be saying, ‘Oh, sorry, we can’t fit you in till a week on Friday.”

“Oh, sorry, we’ve nothing free this month.”

“Oh sorry, don’t bother us, you’ll need to talk to our manager, he handles all that side of things!” The other two gave a burst of laughter at this craziness from John; but prellies, beer and general bonhomie lent wings to their joint imagination and the game caught flight. 

“Oh sorry, no time now, we have to get ready for our booking in London.”

“Our booking in the recording studio.”

“We need to prepare the list for our first LP.”

“Following our number one single.”

George got the next round of drinks in.

“We’ll need a lot more songs for the next LP though.”

“We can write ‘em all. We used to write loads, didn’t we John. We can just put them on. An LP of Lennon and McCartney originals.”

“What about me?”

Paul turned to him. “Well, you could write some too. D’ya think you might?”

George shrugged. “Don’t bother me. Anyway, I’ll be world famous for designing my new guitar. And I won’t have time, we’ll be touring the world. In our jet!”

“Playing to packed theatres in America.”

Paul spluttered with laughter and some of his beer went up his nose and he had to wipe it with the back of his hand.

“Ugh, yer disgusting.”

“Fuck theatres,” John reconsidered. “We’ll be playing to huge open air places, like sports places, like Wembley but in America.”

“And Wembley.”

“And then,” George was really getting into his stride. “When we come home from America we’ll be on Sunday Night at the London Palladium!” And, as one, all three started to sing the well-known signature tune as they waved at an imaginary audience from an imaginary podium.

“And then we’ll go to Buck House to meet the Queen.”

“What do we want to meet her for?” John nodded in agreement at George’s disdain, but Paul was undaunted. 

“So we can get decorated.”

“What, with wallpaper.”

“Don’t be daft, she’ll be handing out knighthoods.” It was George’s turn to snort, with less messy results. “Sir Paul McCartney,” Paul declared with a flourish, to be interrupted by a derisive John. 

“Your round, Sir Paul,” and Sir Paul obediently got to his feet and went for three more beers. While he was at the bar John heaved himself to his feet and disappeared to the toilets, and George took the opportunity to visit as well, many pints of beer having had their inevitable effect. By the time all three boys were back at their table the mood had quietened somewhat. They all sat back with their feet on chairs, Paul having eventually managed to train John out of propping his feet up on a table when in public. George stretched one arm out behind him to grab another ashtray from the next table, which he plopped onto the table top in front of him before lighting a cigarette. A silence fell, as each one applied himself to his next pint.

“Tell you what.”

The other two looked at Paul and waited.

“Stu’s going to have to learn how to play that fucking bass before we hit the big time.” George shook his head. “What d’ya mean?”

“Stu won’t be staying.” George spoke quietly, with a sideways glance in John’s direction to see how that statement was received.

“What d’ya mean?” Paul asked again.

“He’ll be staying here, with Astrid.” George turned to look at John, who shrugged, the nearest they were likely to get to any acknowledgement of his acceptance of the idea.  
Another silence fell.

“Tell you what as well.”

This time Paul and George looked at John. And waited.

“Well, he’s not here, is he. Again.”

The two knew exactly who John was talking about, and their thoughtful silence signalled agreement.

“He can’t fucking drum either.”

Again, neither of the other two disagreed. The three sat quietly for a while, each with their own thoughts, which may well have been in accord had they spoken them out loud. And then a slow, mischievous, lop-sided smile appeared on George’s face. “What?” demanded John, as he blew a cloud of smoke across the table and knocked his ash off into George’s ashtray.

“We could get Ringo.”

“He drums for them,” Paul stated the obvious, but George shrugged. 

“Well, if he has a choice of our private jet or them, who’s he going to choose, eh?”

The other two burst out laughing, and George grinned and then rubbed his hand across his thin face. “I’m bushed. I’ve gotta go.”

“Yeah.” Paul stubbed his cigarette out and pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s go.”

Once all were on their feet they waved to the band on stage and strolled tiredly towards the club exit. However, as they approached the door John grabbed Paul’s arm urgently. “Wait!”

“Wassup?” Paul was just realising how tired he was and he sounded grumpy.

“We can’t just go out there like this. We need police protection – all the fans waiting for us!”

“We didn’t call the police in time!” George’s eyes grew wide in mock alarm.

“We’re just going to have to risk it! C’mon! One, two, three, GO!”

John, Paul and George burst through the doors of the club and out onto the Grosse Freiheit.

Two rather overweight girls tottered past them arm in arm on their way down the street. A scruffy dog trotted by. Four sailors rocked towards them along the road and rocked on past, ignoring them completely.

“Oh, I forgot,” said George, mildly. “I did call the police. They must have cleared the street for us.”

“Nice work,” John nodded approval, and George chuckled. Paul moved behind them both and with a hand against each of their backs pushed them in front of him along the street at a run. Giggling and laughing and shouting happy abuse at each other, the three, always the three even though others may have come and gone, moved as an unsteady unit along the brash and indifferent street towards their rooms, and sleep.


End file.
